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Replying to Inquirer in post #194]
Did you not read the article I cited? are the facts unwelcome?
Do you dispute the extracts from that article?
Since I did not dispute anything in the article earlier, I won't respond to the excerpts as they aren't relevent. But you seem to be disputing this one:
"
The maximum human lifespan (approximately 125 years) has barely changed since we arrived."
This peer-reviewed science paper does not support or even suggest that humans could ever reach anything like 900 year ages.
If a person five thousand years ago had lived for 900 years, do you not think that it would be remarkable to the rest of the population? do you not think they'd note this, record this, tell others of this, do their best to pass this amazing information on to later generations?
Well that's what they did, it likely never crossed their minds they'd be accused of lying and making things up because later generations would insist on viewing the world through the narrow lens of scientism.
People have always told stories, and the telephone game has been around far longer than the telephone. Stories about 900+ year old people, some attributed to people who likely never actually existed themselves (eg. Moses who supposedly lived to 120, or Abraham to 175), cannot be taken as representing reality just because they are found in a holy book. Stories abound in these types of books that are far wilder than 900+ year old people. Should we believe all of them?
We are (we are told) closely related to apes, well what of Gigantopithecus? by some estimates this creature stood 9ft perhaps as tall as 12ft. How do you know that some similar unusual longevity was not present at some point in the past in some tribe or clan of ancient people?
Gigantopithecus was not a member of the genus
Homo and is thought to be more closely related to orangutans. So not particularly relevant to humans. But 9-12' is only about twice the height of a human ... not a factor of 10, and there are plenty of other animal examples where their sizes were gigantic compared to similar animals today (eg. megalodon). The genus
Homo has only been around for some 2-3 million years, and humans of the type described in the OT were evidently anatomically modern humans (ie.
Homo sapiens). There is zero evidence of any kind that humans living in biblical times (whenever that actually was ... people can't even agree on that) reached anywhere near 900 years of age. Physiologically that is impossible if they were in fact
Homo sapiens and not some mythical category of human that doesn't exist today and that we have no evidence for in the fossil record.
You don't, you have absolutely no idea if anyone in the past lived for 200, 300, 600 or 900 years, absolutely no idea!
I do have an idea (they didn't). There is zero evidence for it, and zero physiological basis for any
Homo sapien being able to live anywhere near 900 years of age. It is a myth, and I can be as sure of that as I am that Noah's flood never happened, humans can't high jump 70 feet, or run a mile in 30 seconds.